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| India-Pakistan |
| Inside the military mind |
| 2007-09-16 |
| By Ahmad Faruqui After having governed for nearly a decade, a pro-American military ruler in Islamabad is losing his grip on power. People are rioting on the streets. Protestors are being sent to jail and the threat of an emergency hangs in the air. If you think this describes the drama that is unfolding in Pakistan today, think again. It is a description of the extraordinary events that took place in 1969 when President Ayub Khan was at the helm. We owe a debt of gratitude to the field marshal’s son, Gohar Ayub, for having produced a brilliant expose of the army in his memoirs, “Glimpses into the corridors of power”. Gohar’s picture appears on the book’s cover. In the background looms his father in military uniform. That is entirely appropriate since the book is as much a biography of the field marshal as it is an autobiography of the captain (both Sandhurst graduates). Those expecting a scholarly exposition will be disappointed. There are no footnotes and only two references. A lack of chronological developments mars the narrative. It even affects the photographs in the book, some of which are quite remarkable. But, even with these shortcomings, the book is a must read for anyone with a serious interest in Pakistan. The insights flow from the author’s close working relationship with his father. Gohar served as the president’s ADC for many years, giving him unusual access to the top brass and their lieutenants in mufti. A classic instance is Gohar Ayub’s discussion of President Ayub’s final days. He was suffering from acute heart disease but that fact was known only to a few confidants, including his hand-picked army chief, General Yahya. Gohar had disclosed Yahya’s real intentions to his father, only to be told, “You have served in the GHQ and should know that if the Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army gets it into his head to take over, then it is only God above who can stop him”. Who would have known this better than Ayub? In October 1958, he had deposed the man who had made him chief martial law administrator, Iskander Mirza. Even that deed, Gohar tells us, had Yahya’s finger prints all over it. Yahya had convinced Ayub that Mirza feared all the powers he had placed in Ayub’s hands and planned to arrest him. However, Gohar reminds us that, unlike many others who governed Pakistan after his departure, Ayub gave Mirza a safe passage to London where he continued to earn two Pakistani pensions (one can safely assume that Nawaz Sharif is not getting any). After India attacked Lahore on the September 6, 1965, Pakistan hit back with its mailed fist. The First Armoured Division commanded by Major General Naseer Ahmed was sent in to out-flank four Indian divisions in East Punjab and three in Jammu and Kashmir. Whether this bold manoeuvre would ever have succeeded will never be known because it ended in ignominy, even though Pakistan had much superior weaponry, including the US-supplied Patton tank. It failed for three reasons: * Sheer incompetence. In the beginning, a Patton flipped over a bridge, created a log-jam and slowed the advance. * Poor intelligence about the terrain on the Indian side of the border. The Pattons lost momentum when the Indians breached a levee, flooding the sugar field they were traversing. * Lack of amour-infantry coordination. This allowed Indian jeeps mounted with recoilless rifles to pick off the mired-in-mud Pattons one by one. Afterwards, Naseer told another divisional commander that he wanted to shoot himself. When the news got to the field marshal, he said it would have been nice if Naseer had indeed done so. Ayub had gradually built up the Pakistani military since taking over as the army chief in 1951. He had succeeded in equipping the military with modern weaponry from the United States, much of it acquired at below-market price and financed with American aid. Indeed, as Gohar tells us, two dozen B-57Bs bombers were provided free of charge. It pained Ayub greatly to see all this go to waste in the war with India, especially when he had emerged victorious earlier in the year against Fatima Jinnah. Gohar accepts the war’s criticisms that have appeared from well-placed individuals such as Air Marshal Asghar Khan. He says that it was a disaster for Pakistan, being based on unfounded assumptions about a Kashmiri uprising and about India sitting still on the international border. But he loses credibility when he says that the war was not Ayub’s idea Not only was Ayub the president, he was still in uniform. Gohar conveniently blames the fiasco on Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and the divisional commander in Kashmir. He says Ayub wrote in his diary on the first anniversary of the war that an inquiry should be held (which, of course, was never held because Yahya did not want it). This does little to improve Ayub’s image as supreme commander. Gohar concedes that the celebration of Ayub’s Decade of Development was ill-conceived but places the blame for its observance on the shoulders of the information secretary, Altaf Gauhar. This just highlights Ayub’s gullibility. As the Ayubian denouement neared its end, people rioted. Gohar tells us that an advisor suggested that Ayub should kill 5,000 people to restore the writ of the state. However, Ayub replied that he could not even kill 50 chickens, let alone 5,000 people. He added that were he to begin killing people just to stay in power, four times that number would come after him to take revenge. The fact that Pakistan was not turned into a killing field on Ayub’s watch speaks of his sagacity. However, the fact that Ayub had appointed Yahya as the army chief a few years earlier speaks poorly of his ability to pick lieutenants. As events got out of control in East Pakistan in 1971, Ayub counselled Yahya through a back channel that he should negotiate a withdrawal of Pakistani forces with Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (then Yahya’s prisoner) and seek to preserve Pakistan as a confederation. He had rightly concluded that after the army action, it could not survive as a federation. But Yahya was not in the mood to listen to anyone. When the inevitable happened, he blamed it on the “treachery of the Indians”. Gohar’s discussion of the war in Kargil leaves little doubt that the Pakistani army, once again, did not expect a counter-response from India or the international outrage that ensued. One has to conclude that the Pakistani military mind is prone to gambling, not exactly a quality associated with statecraft. Ahmad Faruqui, an American economist, is the author of “Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan,” Ashgate Publishing, UK |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #1 After nearly a decade, muslims are engaged in war on all their borders internal and external, with their despotic rulers and with one another. They issue blood curdling threats, claim to have been wronged by the world and demand everyone respect and obey their scrolls. If you think this describes the drama that is unfolding in Pakistan today, think again. It is every muslim country since their "prophet" began to implement the findings of his psychotic break. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2007-09-16 18:58 |